You can take the boy out of the country
Colonia, Uruguay, is only 26 miles from Buenos Aires, for us a windy three-hour trip across a grand, quiet river. Jeremy and I arrived at the Buquebus ("boat-bus") terminal at 8 in the morning, of course 15 minutes late on my part, with about 4 hours of sleep. Neither of us were terribly excited about going to Uruguay, missing a relaxing and productive weekend back in BsAs, staying in a cheap hotel and hauling our gear around like regular tourists. Buenos Aires was home. Why would we leave?
This is why. I wish I had a tape recorder to record the sounds of buses and taxis and people at all hours outside my window or Jeremy's, and compare them to the sounds of Colonia... or a brain-wave monitor to register the harsh static that must be running through my head as I walk down the dangerous Buenos Aires streets and sidewalks, and compare that to the smooth sine waves as I contemplated Colonia's beaches. There is a billboard very near the boat terminal in Buenos Aires: "Your body can rest anywhere. Your mind, only in Uruguay." Before I went I thought it was cheesy. When I got back I read it again and thought, "hmm. yeah."
Jeremy said to me at one point, after a few hours of soaking in the calm, that maybe he was at the age where he shouldn't be living in the city anymore, maybe his fast-paced, New-York-Buenos-Aires life was finished. Being originally a country boy myself, I wonder too if someday my heart will finally tell me it's time that I escape to somewhere I can see the horizon, excape from my boxy apartment, squeezed into an elevator or up too many flights of stairs. Will it be a gradual, will I slowly get sicker, the city's toxins increasingly concentrated in my blood despite the city's charms... or will it be a sudden event, a taxi collision trying to cross Avenida Santa Fe, or an emotional breakdown screaming at the crowd on the street?
I remember one of the the first times I was in New York, with my very-NYC friend Sarah Cross, after only a few hours feeling absolutely overwhelmed by the mess and the noise. Now even New York or Buenos Aires feels normal; I am not phazed by horns or buses or subways, and the constant stream of people is comforting somehow. When we first arrived in Buenos Aires, I commented on the whirlwind of a city we'd found ourselves in. Since then I seem to have absorbed it into my blood.
Then I came to Uruguay and realized there's something more in my blood, there is air and trees and the feeling of waves against my legs, that besides the hordes of people I'm so familiar with I'm also quite at home with butterflies and fish and ants building their homes.
The whole time we were in Uruguay I was trying to figure this out, curious as to how I would react when I returned, three hours on the ferry back to civilization. When we got to Jeremy's house the most wilderness we encountered was a scary swarm of beetles, some weird outbreak. I took a bus partway home and walked through the warm night, past the cafes and the people, the streets still busy on Sunday night after midnight. As I approached my apartment building, I felt that funny feeling... "the more i go away the more like home it feels when i return" (-mark), like nostalgia but not quite. And I love it all, I wave at the still-open ice cream shops and corner stores, I go out and buy yesterday's newspaper, celebrate taking the bus and crossing the street without incident. The city welcomes me into her arms again and I am happy. If I need ants I can find them on the sidewalk.
previously there was cambio
afterwards you have Bryan Adams
Cities may indeed diminish in attraction in accord with age, or something associated with age.
Now that I don't feel like I really have so much to accomplish or to prove, I don't feel a need for the whirr and impetus of the city. Instead I find it merely inconvenient. Sometimes massively inconvenient. I no longer crave the mishmash of experience afforded by the tumult of crowded urbanity. Too much of the experience was the shit and piss of disinterested people disinterestedly scooping up my time, energy and money.
The Count of Monte Cristo leaves Paris with an exclamation to the effect of "I leave you, Paris, having taken from you what I wanted, and having left with you everything I wanted to leave. You can no longer give me any pain, nor any pleasure."
Not having quite so romantic a nature as the Count, I now pass by New York in my car and think, "Fuck it, dude. Let's go bowling." Not quite the same sentiment, but equally satisfying. How else to salute something now spent and gone?
Actually, I'm reminded of how Mr. Tyler, lead singer of Aerosmith, did so, when asked where the scads of money went that he'd earned as a monumental success in the 70s and 80s. He said, "Up my nose." [submitted on 09 Jan 03]
I have to say our site would be considerably more interesting if we actually remembered things, like you did, because then we would perhaps have things to say. I don't even know who the heck the Count of Monte Cristo is, much less what the heck he was doing in Paris. Thanks. [submitted on 16 Jan 03]